14 DAY TRIAL // Marine experts from the Zoological Society of London and Marine Environmental Monitoring received a report of a dead dolphin on a beach in Llanengan, near Abersoch, Wales.
When they arrived at the scene, they discovered that a bottlenose dolphin was stranded on the Hell’s Mouth beach after over-eating. Experts carried out a post-mortem and determined that the large mammal choked to death after indulging itself in fish.
The greedy dolphin, which had been tagged by the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Center, was known as Monty and was a 3.34-meter (11-foot) long adult male in good health condition. However, its sweet tooth for fish eventually led to its death by asphyxiation, Daily Mail informs.
“Its stomach was crammed full of fish, and I don’t think there would have been room for any more. So when it swallowed this last fish, it must have been pushed back rolled into a cigar shape, and unusually then lodged firmly in the nasal passages,” says Rod Penrose, strandings co-ordinator for Wales, who helped carry out the post mortem.
“I’ve heard of this happening before but have never seen it. In scientific terms it died of asphyxiation,” he adds.
A whole dab fish was found lodged in the animal's nasal cavity, which experts believe prevented the dolphin from breathing.